The Hopeful Defiance Of Rita Joe, Poet Laureate of The Mi’kmaq People
- indigenoustutoring
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
"Poetry is a particularly compelling literary form for comforting the ruptures of history and the fragmenting effects of settler colonialism. Poetry distills the rage, pain, and defiance of indigenous people, who remain under ideological and physical assault by the settler population that so often insist that our continued existence is an effort and an impossibility.” - Daniel Heath Justice, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter
Through this quote, Daniel Heath Justice discusses the profound impact that poetry has in relation to the Indigenous culture – a culture of strength, hope, and persistence. Conceivably, we get a glimpse of the Indigenous peoples’ struggle coupled with optimism by reading their poetry.
And these Indigenous poets disseminate their peoples’ long-suffering with great emotion. Prepare to have them inspirit you through evoking rhymes that display their peoples’ hard-fought battle of reconciliation and healing. I’ll be reviewing Rita Joe’s ‘I Lost My Talk’ for this post.
Want to read similar poetry? Check out Indigenous Life in Poetry and Prose for a collection of inspiring poems penned by other Indigenous authors!
I Lost My Talk
By Mi’kmaq poet, Rita Joe
I lost my talk
The talk you took away.
When I was a little girl
At Shubenacadie school.
You snatched it away:
I speak like you
I think like you
I create like you
The scrambled ballad, about my word.
Two ways I talk
Both ways I say,
Your way is more powerful.
So gently I offer my hand and ask,
Let me find my talk
So I can teach you about me.
Rita Joe (March 15, 1932 - March 20, 2007), otherwise known as the ‘Poet Laureate of the Mi’kmaq people’, was a Mi’kmaq poet as well as a songwriter. She was born in Whycocomagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. Orphaned at 10 years old, she was sent to the Shubenacadie Residential School, where her native language – the Mi’kmaq language – and culture was castigated.
And this poem portrays that injustice.
I Lost My Talk is a retrospective poem that encaptures Rita Joe’s memories when she was sent to the Shubenacadie Residential School. Loss, shock, trauma, and resentment infused with hope are scars of Rita Joe all displayed in this poem. The poem follows a free verse, with the end of each stanza acting as a segue to the next train of thought or memory. “I lost my talk, the talk you took away” as the first line already sets the dismal tone that is quite ubiquitous throughout the poem’s narrative. An implicit sense of pent-up anger in the line, “I speak like you I think like you I create like you” is vivid as each line hastily continues onto the next, until the comma in “The scrambled ballad,” acts as a pause, momentarily mitigating the tension from those lines with a slower tempo. These lines also portray the injustice that Rita Joe faced in this school as she insidiously felt like her cultural identity was being jettisoned there. This very realization of hers, watching her language and identity being overshadowed, is also insinuated in the line “Your way is more powerful”.
As the poem culminates on a hopeful note, the last tercet invites the school – as well as the reader – to allow the poetess to express her ‘talk’, as well as ‘teach’ us about the Mi’kmaq language and culture. These gestures would hit a nerve as it’s said that when Rita Joe left the residential school, she no longer remembered the Mi’kmaq language, according to Ann Joe (Rita Joe’s youngest daughter).
“And she wanted to share her love for her culture, her love for nature. She wanted to show people this is how native people are, that we’re not savages. That’s how she started writing,” Ann Joe said.
This plays into Rita Joe’s innocuous hope for reconciliation, in spite of how she was reprimanded for speaking her language and expressing her culture. She wanted change, she wanted peace.
Rita Joe, soon after publishing this poem, was awarded the Order of Canada, appointed to the Queen’s Privy Council and has since been called the Mi’kmaq poet laureate. Additionally, ‘I Lost My Talk’ was included in Canada’s final Truth and Reconciliation Report.
She was hurt, but still offered a graceful hand for others to join her in learning about her culture.
And that’s what gained her the ‘Gentle Warrior’ title.
Sources
Author: Neil Lejoy, ITMP Blog Writer
Image credits: Aaron Burden via Unsplash
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